OBOC - Djibouti

An average person's view of Africa today is an amalgam of all the headlines and front page news - war, disease, poverty, resource curse etc. Abdourahman Waberi in "The United States of Africa" turns this view on its head and portrays a "what if" scenario. What if Africa was the richest continent in the world and was therefore sought after by millions of Caucasian refugees from Euramerica? In this topsy- turvy world, Switzerland is a war torn country ravaged by linguistic and ethnic differences; Afghan, Haitian, Laotian Aid Agencies distribute flour and provisions and poor children from France and Luxembourg survive on food surpluses from North Korea and Ethiopia. It is a world where Human Rights Watch report on the North American "quagmire" and one where alternative, liberal voices claim that the biggest threat to African Unity is the "irrational fear of the Other - undesirable aliens".

You can tell that the author is having fun playing out this scenario. "African man felt sure of himself early on. He saw himself as a superior being on this earth, without equal....The others - natives, barbarians, primitives, pagans (almost always white) - are reduced to the rank of pariahs. The universe seems to have been created only to raise him up, to celebrate him"

These what-if scenarios help us understand Africa's current situation - how it is presented to the rest of the world, the language that is used to pack the complicated messages into sound bites -  the inversion of this world helps us see the absurdity of some of the metaphors.

The book is also the story of Maya, the abandoned French girl who is adopted by her African "Doctor Papa" and now lives a life of privilege in Africa instead of being condemned to the squalor of France. Maya although sheltered still faces the racial slur on account of her skin color - "Milk-face", "curd-face".  She undertakes a journey to France to face her birth mother and despite being surrounded by people who look like her, she realizes that she is more African than she imagined herself to be.

Until this point all I have done is capture the essence of the book, now for  my opinions. This was a book that I was so sure that I would love, but I actually had a hard time finishing it. While i enjoyed the reverse scenario for the first few chapters letting my mind explore the "what if", I also ended up asking "so what". I did like the tongue in cheek references, and the play on brands like Nescafe, Ikea and Starbucks etc, but again "so what". If this had been just an essay or a series of essays it would've worked much better, but this was supposed to be a novel and i felt there was no plot here. Even the adventure of Maya in France held all the promise of the Odyssey, but was more like, pardon me for saying this..Alice in wonderland sans the jabberwocky (which is included in the movie versions to make Alice's travel more interesting) and all the action that comes with it - a hodge podge of interesting incidents but not a strong plot. As a novel it was a letdown but as an interesting satirical essay...sure!

OBOC - Cyprus

Between Greece and Turkey I thought I will have Cyprus covered, but chanced on this book at the library and decided to "recognize" Cyprus as a sovereign nation that it is for OBOC :) Lawrence Durrell's travel narrative "Bitter Lemons" is a detailed account of his time spent in Cyprus between 1953 and 1956.

What starts off as a comical narrative documenting Durrell's experiences trying to settle down in Cyprus, finding a quite place and start writing, soon becomes serious as political tensions slowly escalate culminating in violence and forcing Durrell to leave Cyprus.

This is the time in history when the country went through "Enosis" (i.e joining Greece) and he resistance group EOKA was formed. When Durrell accepted a job as Press Advisor he witnessed how unprepared the colonial government was to deal with the changes. Violence is met with violence and there are some lessons here that apply for those governments that are trying to win hearts and minds on the one hand and dealing with "terrorists" or "resistance movements" on the other.

Unfortunately for Durrell things get to a point where he is forced to leave the island without even saying goodbye to his friends. The feelings that Cypriots have for the British is mixed and is best summarized by the taxi driver who drives Durrell to the airport. "Dighenis though he fights the British, really loves them. But he will have to go on killing them -- with regret, even with affection"


Although the first half of the book deals with the relationship between the Turkish minority and the Greek majority, there is not much discussion about the Turks and their feelings about enosis. Of course as we look back we now know that Enosis was abandoned and a complicated power sharing arrangement was worked out as Cyprus became an independent nation. Durrell of course had to leave much before that.

Despite the historical background and the humor, this book did not appeal to me as much as I hoped it would. So it was a difficult read for me and I am glad to be finally done with it and move to the other D's.

OBOC - Denmark (and Greenland?)

While Isak Dinesen was the obvious choice for Denmark, I didn't want to read about Kenya for Denmark (especially given that i am not a big fan of the short story format). So I went with Peter Hoeg and his most famous novel "Smilla's Sense of Snow".

Little did I know that I would hit two countries with one book, and honestly I learned more about Greenland than about Denmark through this one. But hey, what else can one expect when the heroine of the novel is a Greenlander with a great sense for snow (she prefers the solid state to the liquid one clearly). Smilla is a cross between Houdini (she can walk on water and go through locked doors) and a nerdy Clint Eastwood (in every single brooding portrayal). In fact if this book had a hero instead of a heroine I am sure it would've been made into a Clint Eastwood movie along the lines of Gran Torino.

The daughter of an Eskimo woman and a Danish doctor, Smilla migrates to Denmark to live in the "White Palace" - a piece of land donated by the Housing Authority and the home of many migrants. She liked to be left to herself and hated any form of control ("detest passport and birth certificates, government control and demands"). Her only companions were books on Euclidean geometry and her neighbor the 6 year old Isaiah a fellow Greenlander like her.

When Isaiah meets with his mysterious death falling from the snow covered roof of the white palace, Smilla refuses to believe that it was an accident. The snow had its own way of revealing its mysteries to Smilla that she doesn't rest until she unravels what happened to Isaiah on the snow covered roof. The mystery leads us to Isaiah's father who died on the job, the corporation he worked for, the mysterious people who run the corporation, the many voyages between Greenland and Copenhagen financed by the company to smuggle into Denmark something bigger than drugs, something alive from Gela Alta.

Peter Hoeg keeps the pace gripping most of the time (although you find it pretty easy to unravel what's at the end), and along the way educates the reader on many scientific topics from glacial snow to astronomy to mathematics and tropical parasites. But what made the book very interesting to me, is the character development of Smilla - her voice, her sarcasm, her passion for the obscure. In any piece of writing I find analogies very fascinating and this book was so full of them. ("The number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. Like the numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers longing. Do you know the mathematical expression for longing? The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you're missing something"). It is remarkable that Peter Hoeg pulled off a complicated female voice with such ease.

The other theme was colonization by Denmark of Greenland and the effect it has on the Inuits.Morality has also been explored quite a bit - what is the moral code of Scientists and Science? role of religion etc.

Overall I liked the book, but i found it rambling in certain sections and Hoeg could've used a good editor. So it doesn't rank too high on my list of suspense novels. But I loved Smilla - just like the glaciers that she is so fond of, on the surface she is cold, but with depth you find she is actually warmer than you expected.